Quality Police Officer

Chief, I’m writing this letter to you because as the lieutenant I feel that a good percentage of our team lacks a great deal of qualities an officer of this date and age needs. When I look at the feed back we are getting from the community the last two quarters and compare it to the past few years, our image just continues to be on a heavy decline. Now Chief I can understand that this generation has a poor outlook on police officers, but at some point we have to get the youth and the community back on our side. I feel that we need to thicken our interviewing of more charismatic officer. We need the men and women who can indentify with our neighbors, I think that the time has come where we need to start weeded out these guys who are only concerned with having the badge so they can boss others around and feel important for a few hours a day. We need the Sheppard’s and we need to start kicking these wolves out of our town. I think that our test should be searching for the following.
Charisma- I think if we can get approval for a live course maybe contain a few things, I think we need to have a stage that deals with a “victim”, acting from a special victim crime, unarmed/armed robbery, burglary, assault, or what not. We need to evaluate how well they can deal with the victim; they have to be caring, and comforting.
Resourceful- we as officers of the law need to be to take a step back and look around and see what the offenders left. The officers of this day need to have a fact finding ability that it seems like our officers are lacking these days. Which brings me back to this course I we need a room, or a few houses, or just a few rooms, and they come in and solve the mock cases.
Persistence- we need to get the ones who never quit, I want my guys making me send them home late a night, because they want to stay and work the case.
Loyalty, integrity and honesty are a must but we only can know about these traits later in their time spent. Our department